The use of touch-sensitive surfaces as input devices for computers and other electronic computing devices has increased significantly in recent years. Exemplary touch-sensitive surfaces include touch pads and touch screen displays. Such surfaces are widely used to navigate between related user interfaces (e.g., in a hierarchy of user interfaces).
Exemplary user interface hierarchies include groups of related user interfaces used for: organizing files and applications; storing and/or displaying digital images, editable documents (e.g., word processing, spreadsheet, and presentation documents), and/or non-editable documents (e.g., secured files and/or .pdf documents); recording and/or playing video and/or music; text-based communication (e.g., e-mail, texts, tweets, and social networking); voice and/or video communication (e.g., phone calls and video conferencing); and web browsing. A user will, in some circumstances, need to perform such user interface navigations in a file management program (e.g., Finder from Apple Inc. of Cupertino, Calif.), an image management application (e.g., Aperture or iPhoto from Apple Inc. of Cupertino, Calif.), a digital content (e.g., videos and music) management application (e.g., iTunes from Apple Inc. of Cupertino, Calif.), a drawing application, a presentation application (e.g., Keynote from Apple Inc. of Cupertino, Calif.), a word processing application (e.g., Pages from Apple Inc. of Cupertino, Calif.), a website creation application (e.g., iWeb from Apple Inc. of Cupertino, Calif.), a disk authoring application (e.g., iDVD from Apple Inc. of Cupertino, Calif.), or a spreadsheet application (e.g., Numbers from Apple Inc. of Cupertino, Calif.).
But methods for performing these navigations and animating the transition between related user interfaces in a user interface hierarchy are cumbersome and inefficient. For example, using a sequence of mouse-based inputs to navigate between two or more user interfaces is tedious and creates a significant cognitive burden on a user. In addition, these methods take longer than necessary, thereby wasting energy. This latter consideration is particularly important in battery-operated devices.
Additionally, abrupt transitions between different user interface elements can be distracting and jarring for users, which reduces the efficiency of the user when using the device.